Post navigation

Descriptive Narrative Writing: The Phantom’s Lair

In our Writer’s Notebooks this week, we played around with writing our own descriptions of the Phantom’s lair. Drawing upon the noticings and author’s craft lessons from previous units, we each worked to develop a description of the lair that created a strong mood.

Students had full creative license here: their description could reflect any characterization of the Phantom they wanted to work with. Was the Phantom evil, lonely, dangerous, pathetic, mysterious, depressed, romantic, bitter…? The choice was up to the writer.

Each worked to create that chosen mood through a variety of means:

choice of details to include and emphasize

use of imagery and figurative language

use of devices such as repetition and magic three

variety in sentence structure, such as the use of fragments or questions to create tension

choices in paragraphing, such as the use of a dramatic one-sentence paragraph

use of movement in the scene as opposed to description of a static space (the “narrative” part of the descriptive-narrative composition)

Enjoy the work of the following writers. What do YOU notice about the choices each made?

1 thought on “Descriptive Narrative Writing: The Phantom’s Lair”

Dear Mrs. Kriese,
Thank you for sharing your blog post with me. I think it is really fun and interesting that your students have all written different descriptions to the Phantom’s Lair. I think it is a very good skill to learn: How to write detailed and good descriptions that keeps the reader interested. Thank you and keep on writing.